4 
INTRODUCTION. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
neuration of the wings (so frequently overestimated in its systematic value) it deviates so much from the 
other Pierids that there has been much doubt as to the family to which Pseudopontia belongs, in fact it has 
even been doubted whether it was a genuine butterfly at all. — The more vegetation an African district 
shows, the larger and more stately become the Pierids which inhabit it, and the forms of Pieris, Appias and 
Eronia in tropical Africa are among the most imposing representatives of the family. 
The Danaids plaj^ a larger part in Africa on account of their richness in individuals, in spite of 
the relatively small number of forms. They are entirely absent only in the north-western part of the 
continent, in Palaearctic Morocco and Algeria; otherwise they are to be found almost everywhere, even in 
deserts almost devoid of plants, sometimes in strikingly beautiful forms. Euploea, indigenous in the whole 
Indian Region as characteristic butterflies, are entirely wanting in continental Africa, and are to some 
extent replaced by the genns Amauris, which is much less rich in forms. 
The Satyrids are to some extent in the background in the mostly tropical Ethiopian Region. Out 
of the ca. 150 species the small or mediumly small genera Mycalesis and Ypthima are the most largely 
represented. The genus Meneris includes some magnificent forms in the extreme south, but these are a poor 
equivalent for the genus Satyrus, with its numerous species, in the north of the Old World, and Iieteronympha 
in the south of Australia. The family is connected with the neighbouring faunas by the isolated form 
Pararge maderakal, from Abyssinia, the only non-Palaearctic Pararge, and has in common with India 
Melanitis leda, which is distributed through all the warmer part of the Old World. The African forms of 
the genus Elymnias, whose Indian relatives mimic forms of Euploea or Danais, have for their model the 
genus Amauris, indigenous to Africa. 
All the families of the Satyromorphids which are not included in the Satyrids are completely 
wanting in Africa. Neither the Morphids, the Amathusiids nor the Brassolids have any representative in 
Africa, nor even any ally which can be regarded as an equivalent for these gigantic butterflies. 
The Nymphalids, whose relatively even distribution over the world we have already mentioned in 
another place (Vol. IX, p. 4), constitute just a third of all the known African butterfly-forms if we include 
with them Acraea, so closely allied to the Melitaeids. In Charaxes, of which 100 purely African forms are 
known, in Cymotlioe, with over 50, in Eurypliene, Diestogyna and Euphaedra (the old Pomalaeosoma), with 
100 species collectively, we have a rich contingent of imposing buttertlies, which is constantly being 
increased with the growth of our knowledge of Central Africa. It is worthy of note that the ca. 300 large 
forms of African Nymphalids are almost all crowded into the equatorial region, but the south of the 
continent is quite poor in the larger Nymphalids, and the (Palaearctic) north of Africa only possesses 
7 larger and 6 smaller species. 
The Acraeids number in Africa over 150 forms, sometimes merged into one another, and there is 
no hill, steppe or river-bank in the Ethiopian Region where one does not observe these thinly-scaled buttertlies, 
apparently so weak and helpless, yet so tenacious of life. In the Palaearctic fauna we have only one 
species, which scarcely reaches the region, and in the Indian Region likewise only a few scattered representatives. 
But in America a parallel branch has developed in the genus Adinote, which nevertheless, large as is its 
number of forms, does not extend beyond the tropics, either north or south, to any degree worthy of mention. 
Africa produces no examples of the third group of the »Acraeomorphid Nymphalinids«, the Maracuja- 
buttertlies of Fritz Muller, which are represented in the Indian tropics by Cethosia and in the American 
by Heliconius and the Nymphalids of the Colaenis group. 
The Libytheids and the Erycinids are also very poorly represented in Africa. This is the less 
surprising in the former since, although Libythea is distributed over all the warmer parts of the earth and 
is mostly also common, yet there is scarcely a country in which we meet, with more than one form of 
this remarkable genus. As regards the Erycinids, whose head-quarters are in tropical America, they appear 
in Africa in the same insignificance and paucity of species as in the Palaearctic and Indo-Australian Regions, 
namely in only 10 forms. 
The Lycaenids, through their richness in forms, constitute about a third of the whole butterfly 
fauna of the Ethiopian Region. In the sand-coloured, sometimes mimetically altered genera Mimacraea, 
Pseuderesia, Li plena, Pentila, etc., we find thoroughly unfamiliar modifications of the Lycaenid type, whilst in 
Aplina'eus, Heodes and others we notice analogies to well-known groups from other faunas (Cigaritis, Chry soph anus). 
Lycaenesthes, Lampides, Zizera, Iolaus and Deudorix preserve in Ethiopian Africa their universal distribution. 
The Grypocera, composed of the single family of the Hesperids, occur in Africa in about 350 species; 
this corresponds approximately to their distribution in the warmer part of Asia. But this number falls 
considerably below the multitude of their American allies, although in itself it appears not inconsiderable. 
